Accredited services are committed to ongoing service review and improvement, offering high quality care to their patients and service users.
Improving Quality in Physiological Services (IQIPS)
Improving Quality in Physiological Services (IQIPS) is an accreditation scheme for physiological services, including respiratory and sleep services. The accreditation scheme is managed and delivered by the United Kingdom Accreditation Scheme (UKAS) and the standards developed and maintained by professional bodies.
Services that successfully gain accreditation have shown that their services comply with the professionally developed standards across 5 domains: Leadership & Management, Clinical Patient Experience, Safety & Risk Management and Facilities & Resources. Accredited services are committed to ongoing service review and improvement, offering high quality care to their patients and service users. The IQIPS accreditation programme is now recognised by the Care Quality Commission (CQC) and fully supported by the Department of Health and Social Care. More details on IQIPS can be found at www.ukas.com/accreditation/standards/iqips
ARTP Position Statement on IQIPS
Accreditation to the IQIPS standard is a hallmark of quality and patient safety in respiratory and sleep services. ARTP encourages and recommends that all respiratory and sleep diagnostic services start to discuss service accreditation within their Trusts with service managers/healthcare science networks and start to engage in IQIPS accreditation.
UKAS have developed a Readiness Self-assessment for the IQIPS 2023 standards. This will help identify if there are any gaps in evidence before starting an application. There are a series of questions relating to the different aspects of the standards to determine if you have the level of evidence required for an application. The assessment can take 30 minutes to complete, however this assessment does not have to be completed all at once. All fields must be completed with "Yes/No/Somewhat" before submission. Based on the answers provided, areas will be identified that require more work, are nearly there or looking good. This is an indicator for readiness and not an absolute guarantee. The process aims to improve the quality delivered by services and the care they offer to patients. UKAS also now offers benchmarking exercises to support services on their journey towards a full application. This also allows physiological services within Trusts to collaborate and work together and also to raise the profile of Healthcare Science services.
Inevitably, there are services that do not meet the required standards and offer sub-optimal care to patients, which may lead to misdiagnosis or poor patient outcomes, and this is not acceptable. Services performing diagnostic procedures or involved in treatment regimens must always strive to offer the highest standards. The 2025 report from the Kingdon review of paediatric audiology highlighted the impact on patients health if services do not maintain appropriate standards.
It is therefore essential that all services (regardless of department size) engage to achieve IQIPS accreditation as the accepted badge of quality for respiratory and sleep services and continue to improve quality. This must be every services responsibility to recognise the important work we do as healthcare professionals, and to continually improve standards.
ARTP IQIPS Engagement
IQIPS sits within the remit of the ARTP standards committee. Several committee members are involved with the IQIPS process, having been through the process, working as assessors or engaging directly on the Accreditation Clinical Advisory Group (ACAG). The ACAG is comprised of representatives from all physiological sciences and ARTP has a respective representative for both Respiratory and Sleep. The role of the ACAG is to advise UKAS on any changes being made to the standards and represent the interests of the members of the various professional bodies.
ARTP have developed a member only forum for discussion of IQIPS related topics. This will allow support to those new to the process, with common questions being answered by experienced centres that have completed the process.